Who You Callin' A Harlo?

On my bike ride this noon I noticed one of those big plywood storks you can rent to announce the birth of a baby.[1] The plywood stork had clenched in its plywood beak a plywood balloon with the words “Welcome baby Harlo.”

I saw the name and was momentarily taken aback, because I didn’t see “Harlo”; I saw “Harlot.”

I’m special but I’m not that special, so I’m probably not the only person who will make the Harlo-Harlot connection and conclude that naming your child “Harlo” is pretty much like naming her “Rostitute.” 

This is one of those cases where it pays to be complete. You want to name your kid “Harlow”[2]? Add the bloody “W.”

Another area that would have benefited from completeness in communication (transition alert) was the Handful O’Landfill era. I was reminded of this when I found a near-complete run of Trade Fax while cleaning out a file cabinet.

Trade Fax was a weekly trade publication started by Krause Publications to satiate the hobby’s interest for breaking news (breaking in the sense of being less than 10 days old) and break the backs of a couple of competitors, The Brill Report and Beckett Insider. Today the idea of up-to-the-last-10-days news being delivered on paper the consistency of Warren Jabali’s drawers[3] is ludicrous, like putting potato chips in boxes.[4] Back then it was like Twitter on muscle relaxants.

I didn’t have to dive far into Trade Fax to get stopped by a random fact. In fact, I cliff-dived headlong into this one and was paralyzed from the waist down.

The fact was a quote from a SkyBox product manager named Ken Smith. Ken isn’t around anymore. He died way too young – a real shame, because he was a peach of a guy: smart, funny, polite in that delightful southern manner, self-effacing.

Ken understood what it took to move product, so it really wasn’t a surprise to see the breakout quote in Trade Fax that said, “While gimmicks do have limits, it’s important to keep putting new products on the market.”

While Ken is guilty of being just a little too aggressive in the candor department, the quote also suffers from a lack of completism. I don’t think Ken said, “While gimmicks do have limits, it’s important to keep putting new products on the market,” and just left it there; I think he said, “While gimmicks do have limits, it’s important to keep putting new products on the market,” and then added, “so our gimmicks can beat the snot out of their gimmicks.”

The other fascinating thing about this issue of Trade Fax was its lead story, a description of the legal fight between Classic and Upper Deck Authenticated over autographed memorabilia. Basically, UDA was doing what it did best – file legal action, this time against Classic parent the Score Board over its selling of autographed memorabilia featuring UDA-exclusive athletes Wayne Gretzky, Mickey Mantle, Joe Montana, and Reggie Jackson.

Hoo doggie. UDA and Classic duking it out over autographs. This is better than Scott Walker and Kim Kardashian mud-wrestling over the rights to The Lone Ranger 2, with Vladimir Putin (wearing Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring) as the mud.

The quotes are classic, especially from Ken Goldin, the shopping-channel pot that would not hesitate to call any kettle in the cupboard black as a Paula Deen nightmare (tha Timbaland remix).

After UDA’s Brian Burr led off by saying, “We will do whatever we can to clean up the sports-autograph business. The consumer must be protected from the illegal businesses that profit from sports fans’ lack of awareness,” Goldin countered with, “What the case claims and what their press release says are two different things. Score Board is not being sued due to sale of unauthorized memorabilia, but because we’re supposedly infringing on UDA’s exclusive contracts with four athletes[5] … It’s a bullying tactic.”

Ken From New Jersey then went in for the kill. First he said he resented being included in a suit with “three entities that we know nothing about” (though if he knew nothing about one of the entities, Shop At Home, I am all the characters in the movie Rango, including the thing that looks like a cross between a gila monster and a hiking boot). Then he added, “What they’re doing is pathetic. UDA is a company whose co-founder and half-owner [Bruce McNall] has been convicted of fraud. They fired their president and shut down their mail-order catalog and retail outlets. Their highest-paid athlete [Mickey Mantle] is suing them for breach of contract. It should be very easy for anyone to figure out the reasons for this suit.”

How do you like them apples, Upper Deck?

I don’t have a record of what happened after that. My guess is that the two entities came to a settlement wherein McNall and Richard McWilliam donated their supplies of snake oil to the National Strategic Reserve in exchange for Ken Goldin having sinus surgery. But this one Trade Fax – and I have hundreds of others – gives you some idea of how serious (or maybe seriocomic) the pictures-on-cardboard business was at the height of the Handful O’Landfill era.

In other words, this post suffers from a serious lack of completism. And since I don’t have the motivation to complete it, I think I’ll sign off.

Hope you enjoyed my post. Have a nice day.

Sincerely yours, Treetwalker

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[1] I wanted to say, “One of those big plywood storks you can rent from …,” and then fill in the blank, but then I realized I have no idea what sort of place rents big plywood storks. Stevens Point Stork Supply? Rent-A-Stork? The Stork Store? I think this will have to remain one of life’s great mysteries.

[2] Because it is a far, far better choice to name your innocent newborn after a self-destructing, substance-abusing, bed-hopping blonde actress, and spell her name properly. The name does sound kinda pretty, and there is the historical value. Besides, naming your child Marilyn Monroe Jones is such a cliché. Unless it’s a boy.

[3] Cf. Pluto, Terry, Loose Balls, p. 218. “Warren noticed that the kid was wearing cotton underwear. Jabali reached over and literally ripped the shorts right off the kid. Warren said, “Don’t you know that our ancestors had to pick this cotton? Get yourself some slick drawers.” Thanx and a hat tip to Jim and Sparky for that one.
[4] Of all the wayback-machine culture shocks my kids have been exposed to, this may have been the most shocking. For weeks afterwards they would break into bouts of head-shaking and mutter, “Potato chips in boxes?” It was a foodstuff and a container that simply did not go together, like chicken in a jar.
[5] Which would technically make the memorabilia unauthorized, but let’s not get wrapped up in the details here.

Par for the Course -- Get It?

Historically it’s been hard to get people excited about golf cards, and I can prove it. Golf cards. There. I said it. You excited yet? I rest my case.

Beyond the overwhelming dullness of the concept – and it’s like South Dakota in its bleak vastness, with the Corn Palace on one end and Wall Drug on the other – the demographics don’t line up. Now, granted, in the heyday of trading cards no one talked about demographics. They were too busy talking about debentures and annuities, and reciting the Greek alphabet to one another. When they weren’t doing that, it was a Cherokee Strip land-grab for licenses, and when the dust settled only a few odd stragglers like Calvin and Hobbes and the Hanna-Barbera cartoons (note to self: why?) had retained their dignity.

No, the truth is that eight-year-old boys and golf have never exactly seen eye-to-eye. Granted, I played a variant of golf when I was eight years old. I have the scar on my jaw to prove it. (I stood too close to Bobby Miller on his backswing.) We hacked around in our backyard, seeing how far we could drive a green plum, which lacked the dimpled aerodynamics of a Top-Flite XL but made a much better sound (and stain) when it struck the garage wall. Even so, golf was a poor 10th, behind baseball, football, basketball, tennis, swimming, green-plum fights, rotten-tomato fights, and currant wars, and in a league with Jarts and roller-skating (with the skates that clamp to your feet, fall off at a frequency in direct proportion to the steepness of the hill you’re descending, and throw a bearing anytime you utter a preposition).

So would I have bought golf cards when I was eight? Sure – but you have to realize: I was not the target audience. I craved the unusual, the weird, the off-the-beaten-middle-of-the-road stuff. I made (okay, my mom made) the local candy distributor order hockey cards in a market where the nearest NHL team was a four-hour drive away but none of the locals knew that. I bought (okay, my mom bought) Fleer Cloth Patches and Topps Jumbos and World Series cards and any other sporting confection Lang’s or Northside Drug wanted to carry (but not Odd Rods or Gomer Pyle, USMC cards, because they weren’t sports cards, silly). I did not chew the gum but stuck it in a candy jar. I did not stick the cards in a back pocket or flip them but put them in the boxes model train cars came in, and the most physical thing I did with them was build card houses.

So, yeah, I probably would have bought (or had my mom buy) golf cards.

Not these golf cards, though. ’65 Topps AFL golf cards, definitely. ’69 Topps Cap Peterson golf cards, for sure. ’64 Philly golf cards, more than likely. But not Imperial Sporting Collection Ryder Cup golf cards.

Still, I get where these cards are coming from. England, if I read the box right.

I mean, I actually get these cards’ raison d’être. They’re meant to resemble old British cigarette cards without the cigarettes, which is about as fair a trade as I can imagine.

British cigarette cards used sketchy art, and often this same sort of portrait-hovering-above-action (sic)-shot art, to showcase many of the action sports that cram the isles. You know – cricket, golf, bowls, fox hunting, darts, snooker, pub-crawling.

They didn’t often come in this size, though. The Imperial Sporting Collection cards are 2-3/8x3-1/8, smaller even than the old square Goudeys, and that makes them poor fits in just about any media you might use to display them. Not that you would, but you have to do something with them, because once you’ve bought the set that’s it. There’s nothing else to do but sit back and baste in the glory.

And there’s not a ton of that to be done, either. In contrast to many complete-in-the-box sets, there’s not much to this set – only 15 cards, including two recap cards. (I mean, it is a Ryder Cup set. If it didn’t just show the Ryder Cup team and get the heck out of there I’d be accusing it of set-padding, and who wants a padded Ryder Cup set? Not me.)

The combination of small cards, small set and wispy packaging makes this the skimpiest set of trading cards ever. This is an SI-swimsuit-edition-bikini of a trading-card set. Honestly, a single Ghirardelli chocolate square takes up more space, only the chocolate weighs more until you eat it, then it’s about even.

Ah, but the talent. There is more talent in the Ryder Cup set than in the aforementioned chocolate but not by much, since this is the Ryder Cup team from 1987, when European golfers, while not exactly inferior to the American models, largely kept to themselves on their tour. So while there’s Seve Ballesteros – the main reason for buying this set, now as then – there’s also lots of chumps with side partings that wouldn’t come apart at Royal Troon, guys like Ken Brown, Gordon Brand Jr. and Jose Riviero. They’re not duffers by any means, but they’re the Booth Lustegs of the golf world – which made their triumph in 1987 all the more surprising. It was like Florida Golf – excuse me, Gulf – Coast, in white belts.

Even with the included glassine wrap, the Imperial Sporting Collection Ryder Cup set is the lightest complete trading-card set I’ve ever encountered – not the optimum combination of attributes. It’s like having the best-smelling car. What does it get you?

In the case of the Imperial Sporting Collection, it didn’t get them sales. There was this set, a larger and somewhat more weighty set of American golfers (same size cards, though), the deathless Panasonic European Open set, and a set of “All Time Great Quarter Backs” (think Joe Montana with saddle shoes, or the Bernhard Langer art done up with shoulder pads), and then the Imperial Sporting Collectors were gone back across the pond, presumably to peddle their art to grownup eight-year-old boys with plaid slacks and Hush Puppies and vacant spaces in their offices just the right size.

And walls that can’t take a lot of weight.

I Refuse To Join Any Club That Would Have Anthony Dilweg As A Member

First, let me dispatch a nasty bit of business. The NFL Quarterback Club was not formed to address a looming shortage of Bubby Brister cards. It was formed because Bernie Kosar’s wife, Babette, threatened Bernie with divorce if he didn’t get the damn thing put together (and then she went and divorced him anyway, because all he got from Nevin Shapiro was a photo op with Donna Shalala).

Actually, it’s pretty obvious why the QB Club burst into existence like a dwarf star (which, yes, could refer to Will.I.Am). It burst because the trading-card and memorabilia biz was blowing up like Alderaan, and the guys who ostensibly made it all possible weren’t getting nearly enough of the proceeds. And yes, we’re talking about you, Ken O’Brien, Jim Harbaugh, Boomer Esiason, Chris Miller, and the aforementioned Bubby.

Okay, better QBs than that traipsed through the QB Club. I have record of John Elway, Dan Marino, Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Jim Everett, Randall Cunningham, Troy Aikman, and Warren Moon doing hard time in the club, but unsurprisingly not Joe Montana, if my definitive source on the topic, my QB Club T-shirt, can be trusted.

(This makes total sense, as Joe Montana was renowned even during his playing days as a money-hungry free-ranger who would take a check from anything, even a soul-sucking one-eyed alien vampire zombie – or, more outrageously, Upper Deck's Richard McWilliam.)

The QB Club was a self-contained marketing force, neither league-born nor players’-association-spawned, meant to glorify, and in the process make money for, pro football’s most elite marquee players: its quarterbacks.

That was how the QBs saw it, anyway. The rest of the world looked at the club’s roster and said, “Hmmm … Dan McGwire. Nascent Storage Wars guest star. Twice voted most likely to be named golf pro at the Snoqualmie Country Club before the age of 30.” The word “pass” has double meaning for many members of the Quarterback Club.

Part of the reason for the disconnect was the QB Club’s membership requirements. Initially at least you had to be a National Football League quarterback. It never said anything about being good, or mobile, or articulate, or having a clean driving record, or not being pulled in the second half in favor of Stan Gelbaugh.

Oh, and one more thing: You had to look good in zebra-striped shorts. I had forgotten about this until I saw an old clip of Ken O’Brien at the QB Challenge, the club’s skills competition that served as its Battle of the Network Stars. The club had a uniform consisting of black-and-white-striped cutoff Zubaz (and if you don’t remember Zubaz, God bless you), I guess because they go with any jersey and make your legs look like they’re being tapped for rubber. And nothing helps you nail bull’s-eyes on moving golf carts like having zebra torsos attached to your feet.

As scripted reality TV goes it was no Cupcake Wars, and it was even less impressive in person. I went to one in Hawaii and lasted about 15 minutes before walking out. Stacey O’Brien was wearing a T-shirt, for crying out loud, and Bubby Brister was overthrowing 20-foot-tall targets 10 yards downfield. As a lovely parting gift I got a pair of tentlike Zubaz and, not finding Gilbert Brown in the vicinity, regifted them to a sanitation receptacle. Several years later the resort was destroyed in a hurricane. I’m pretty sure it was retribution.

The first time the QB Club showed up in football cards was in 1991, when they appeared in an Upper Deck-produced set distributed by Domino’s Pizza.

There was some serious want on this set at the time. Dealers were buying stacks of Domino’s cheese pizzas, snabbing the cards and then ditching the pizzas – never a bad idea – and delivery drivers were being offered $20 or more for the cards that came in the pizza boxes, even though ultimately the pepperoncini were more collectible.

The Domino’s set opened the door for a storm surge of special sets and subsets featuring the QB Club, and once that door was opened even Aaron Gibson didn’t have enough avoirdupois to hold it shut. The 1994 battle between the NFL and the players’ association over licensing money turned the surge into a tsunami. The QB Club even began to admit non-QBs who smelled the money: Jerry Rice, Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith. Basically any non-quarterback who could dance the fox trot and audition for a Just For Men ad was in.

Trading-card companies that had contracted with the QB Club had to find unique ways to fulfill their obligations. Third-party sets like the inimitable King-B Jerky Stuff discs were custom-made for the QB Club, as were precious-metal medallions and metal cards. (That’s why God made the airbrush.) Even so, most of the QB Club’s on-card appearances were in chase sets. The cries of, “Wow -- David Klingler!” still resonate in the space between my ears.

The battle over licensing and the rapid decline of the card business hastened the development of the one semi-legitimate spawn of the Quarterback Club: video games. I’m not going to say much about the long-running series of GameBoy and N64 games featuring the QB Club because they’re not funny, other than to comment how much a young Brett Favre resembles Squirtle.

The QB Club still lives in a much-diminished capacity, like Chad Ochocinco, and every now and then they dust off the Quarterback Challenge and the bull’s-eyes on golf carts. Personally I think it’s time for another revival. Tim Tebow, Cam Newton, and Jason Campbell slinging fastballs at 10-foot-square targets 20 yards downfield? Now that’s entertainment.